Throughout his tumultuous career, Peter Abelard faced a series of vehement backlash against his theological work as well as the way in which he led his personal life; in fact, his affair and his secret marriage with Héloïse resulted in physical castration, and his conflicts with Bernard and Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, a theological conflict. Abelard's controversial position regarding the Trinity and the rights of the devil led to his condemnation at the Council of Sens in 1141 and, after an unsuccessful attempt to win the pope's favor, he was excommunicated and his works burned. The viciousness of Bernard's polemic against Abelard marked him and his theology with the stamp of heresy, but Abelard was a gifted thinker and debater, as the Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him, "the keenest thinker and the most daring theologian of the 12th century"[1 ] and, especially given the rise of the moral theory of atonement in our more liberal modern context, Abelard's theology, particularly his soteriology, deserves to be 'be revisited. Having ignored the theories of ransom and satisfaction of atonement, omnipresent in medieval soteriology, Abelard embarked on a reflection on the true role of Christ and the crucifixion in God's model of salvation. He does this in relation to his specific conception of sin. In this essay, I will seek to examine whether Abelard's account of sin sheds light on his account of atonement. I will seek to support the argument that Abelard's conception of sin is inextricably linked to his understanding of atonement; his belief in the inherited punishment of original sin makes the death of Christ necessary to free us from this punishment. But simultaneously, we find in Abelard a shift from this bloody and sacrificial salvation towards an expiation of love; his understanding of sin as entirely intentional necessarily means that salvation, for Abelard, must occur at the level of intention - the death of Christ acts in a subjective sense to ensure the reorientation of our intentions from concupiscence to purity and fear towards love. This is not to say that Abelard is a proto-modern theorist of moral atonement since he still seems to subscribe to the idea of ​​objective sacrifice. However, in Abelard, we find a certain movement towards a soteriology rotating on the axis of love; Abelard's conception of justice is defined in terms of love for God and, in turn, his conception of sin is defined in terms of the absence of this love. Atonement therefore depends on the resurrection of lost love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In order to assess the extent to which Abelard's conception of sin informs his theory of atonement, one must first first explore what sin looks like for Abelard; as Williams notes, "Abelard's understanding of the power sin has over us will be crucial to understanding what he thinks Christ accomplished for us on the Cross." »[2] Abelard seems to adopt a two-tiered understanding of sin whereby he argues that we are bound by the punishment of original sin ("the objective domination of sin")[3], on the one hand, and bound by the personal sin (“the subjective domination of sin”)[4] on the other hand. I will turn first to the latter type. I think it is fair to say that Abelard's understanding of sin is inextricably linked to his idea of ​​justice which, as Williams observes, "consists simply of loving God for himself and acting rightly out of love for him. »[5] This love, Abelard calls “charity”; it exists both in us andin God, with God's own charity which gives rise to charity in his creation towards him. Since righteousness and justice depend on God's love, it follows that "our sin is contempt of the Creator, and to sin is to despise the Creator – to fail to do for Him what we believe we ought." do for his "for him, or not renounce for him what we believe we must renounce. »[6] Acting against the will of God is equivalent to acting against God, therefore acting outside of perfect love for him. Abelard postulates a highly individualistic conception of sin; guilt is located in the soul of each individual and he is therefore solely responsible for its management and, consequently, for his relationship with the creator since, as Kemeny points out, “the object of sin is God; sin interrupts the harmonious relationship between the Creator and the creature. »[7] Abelard takes a somewhat complex view of the locus of sin, of the point where sin actually takes place. Contrary to the thinking of many of his contemporaries, Abelard rejects the idea that actions themselves can have ethical value regardless of their intention; he writes that “there is no substance to a sin; it consists of non-being rather than being. It's like we define shadows as the absence of light where light existed. »[8] Furthermore, Abelard rejects the idea that the vices of the mind and body that make an individual prone to sin are not, in themselves, sinful since certain vices of the mind do not lead to sin. not to sin; as Kemeny writes, “...certain vices of the mind, for example boredom, do not make people prone to sin. Others, like irascibility, do. »[9] By overcoming these vices, one can nurture merit and virtue, but they are not themselves inherently sinful. Instead, these morally neutral vices prompt the will to act in an inappropriate manner. It is in intention that Abelard locates sin; actions have ethical value derived from the intentions with which they are committed. As Marenbon writes, “Actions are rightly described as good or bad, but only in virtue of the intentions from which they arise.” But intentions, although they belong to the life of the mind, are only guilty in relation to a definitively intentional (although perhaps prevented) action. »[10] Any intention to act against God's will shows contempt for God and any intention that seeks to do what the individual believes to be good/in accordance with God's will is showing love . There is no wrong in acting in accordance with a good intention, but to be morally good, the belief toward which the intention aims must be correct. For Abelard, to consent is to give in to his intention. Intention is what comprises the action - the reasons why it is done, the moral value of the action, etc. Although for Abelard, an agent is not responsible for his natural inclinations, he is responsible for what he consents to in order to satiate his appetite. . Abelard argues that much of our immoral behavior is actually involuntary—we cannot help but consent to gratify our desires—but that does not excuse it or mean that we are not morally responsible for these involuntary actions. Consenting to act against the will of God, whatever one's natural inclination, is tantamount to refusing God the love due to him by his creation. In tandem with his subjective understanding of personal guilt and sin, Abelard espouses a specific understanding of original sin and the burden that post-lapsarian humanity bears. First, the conditions that incline human beings toward evil desires were generated during the fall; the fall disrupts thecapacity of the rational soul to govern the body and there is a void between humanity and God. Thus, after the fall, humanity inherits certain physical and mental weaknesses, the morally neutral “vices” of which Abelard speaks. But it is these vices that give rise to the evil desires that lead to sin. Furthermore, the fall created sin-inducing conditions by making the world less bearable; as Williams observes, “because of original sin we are subject to temporal woe as well as eternal damnation.” The difficulties of present life in turn incite us to seek security in the goods of the world, and the Law, by promising us such goods, our desire for them is all the more fervent. »[11]With regard to original sin itself, Abelard adopts a position very different from that of the majority of his contemporaries. He does not claim that humanity possesses inherent sin because of its relationship with its first parents, Adam and Eve, but that it possesses inherent punishment for that sin. As Abelard writes, "And so, since we say that men are begotten and born with original sin, and that they contracted this original sin from their first parents, it seems that this should rather be connected with punishment of sin... than to the guilt of the soul and contempt for God. »[12] Original sin, or its punishment, is transmitted through sexual intercourse, in the broad sense that it is transmitted from parent to offspring, but the sexual act itself is It is not sinful and does not add nothing to the punishment of original sin. It seems, then, that Abelard takes a two-tiered approach to sin: the original punishment is inherited by each human being but, separate from that, each human being collects his or her own personal punishment. guilt based on the fact that they succumb to bad intentions. As we will see, this dual understanding of sin feeds into a distinct dual understanding of atonement. Furthermore, it will become clear that when it comes to personal guilt, Abelard's emphasis on sin as lack of love toward God will become the focal point of his theory of atonement. Abelard emphasizes the transformative power of Christ on the cross as the only mechanism of atonement. for personal sin. Abelard focuses on what Christ's death has done in us. At the basis of Abelard's thinking is the fundamental idea that Christians should never serve God out of fear but only out of love; theories such as ransom or satisfaction models prevent us from expressing our love for God because of the bloody act we witnessed in Christ's death – this is not the product of love . For Abelard, if we serve God out of fear, we do not truly love God and without this love we cannot hope to obtain salvation. Alternatively, Abelard wants to argue that, through the atonement, God generates in us a love that enables us to do good works. The salvation mechanism from personal guilt lies at the level of the human heart. This makes sense if we consider Abelard's aforementioned understanding of sin as individualistic and intentional. Through a newly revived love for God inspired by passion and the desire to imitate the perfect love manifested in Christ, our intentions are once again directed towards action in accordance with God's will and therefore away from concupiscence (lusts). and the desires of the heart). . As Abelard writes, ... by this unique grace which he manifested to us - namely that the Son assumed our nature and taught us by his words and his example until death - he bound us more closely to him in love... therefore, the true love of anyone who receives such favor from divine grace will not shrink from thesuffering (tolerare) for himself.[13] However, while it is undeniable that Abelard strongly embraces this subjectivist understanding of the atonement and seeks to orient atonement theology more toward transformation through love rather than through fear, I think that Abelard's status as a mere "exemplary" can sometimes be overestimated. Nieuwenhove summarizes the response of many to Abelard's soteriology: "Abelard's conception of salvation is completely subjectivist (it is something that happens to us) whereas a balanced soteriology should also be objectivist. »[14] Abelard's contemporaries condemned him for a similar reason, arguing that his theory of atonement was on the side of heretical Pelagianism; for example, “the Pelagian danger that Bernard fears is that Abelard has made the atoning work of Christ useless for our salvation. According to such a view, we are in principle capable of earning the dignity of salvation on our own. »[15] It is clear, however, that these Pelagian/mere exemplary accusations are ill-founded. Abelard clearly accepts the objective transaction that occurs at the crucifixion of Christ. First, it is through this objective transaction that the punishment inherited from original sin is absolved. Abelard clearly does not reject the notion of bloody transaction or payment; as he writes in his commentary on Romans 7, “we had power to sell ourselves into slavery, but we have not power to ransom ourselves.” Innocent blood was given for us. Nor can we free ourselves from the dominion of sin by our powers, but only by the grace of the Redeemer.[16] As Williams notes: “…Christ is our Redeemer. the one who redeems us. The price he paid was his blood, in other words his life. One could hardly ask for a clearer statement of an “objective transaction”. ...Christ bore the punishment for our sins so that we would not have to....the punishment to which we would otherwise have been subject is canceled. “[17] In this sense, then, Abelard espouses a version of the penal substitution model by which Christ dissolves our punishment for Adam's sin. In addition to Abelard advocating the idea of ​​an objective transaction as a mechanism for absolution from punishment for original sin, it also seems that without the "objective transaction" there would be nothing to kindle the love necessary for atonement in the subjective sense of the term. It is by imitation of the perfect sacrificial love of Christ that we are saved; As McGrath observes, "Abailard is an exemplar if, and only if, he can be shown to understand Christ as our example, by whose imitation we are redeemed - while it is clear that he understands Christ as our example in the sense that, because we are redeemed by him, we now wish to imitate him. »[18] Without Christ's gift of redemption and the selflessness necessary to achieve it, we are not only inspired to imitate Christ, but also grateful for his grace. It therefore seems that Abelard cannot be categorized as a simple exemplarist since, on the one hand, he espouses a two-level theory of atonement and, on the other hand, the example necessary for the exemplarist position does not was provided only by an objective transaction. I think Quinn's assessment of Abelard as a "hierarchical pluralist"[19] is accurate; he argues that “like Aquinas, he offers an account of the Atonement that has a dominant motif to which the others are subordinate. »[20] Indeed, Abelard has an objective and subjective element in his theory of the atonement, but I think this is equally true. say that the objective elements are underdeveloped compared to the subjective elements. Abelard wants to highlight the transformative power of love.265